Skipping over Endless Quest #12 “Light on Quest’s Mountain”, which is set in the Gamma World universe, we get to the last of the Rose Estes Endless Quest Dungeons and Dragons gamebooks which is also probably my favourite until now. Don’t worry, Rose Estes will be back eventually as she will take over writing Greyhawk novels when Gary Gygax leaves TSR in 1986, giving us 6 novels in that setting between 87 and 89. Unfortunately, it will still take us a little while to get to those books, so we say a fond “see you later” to Estes’ contributions to D&D fiction. 

In this Endless Quest you play a young wizard, Morgan, who is entrusted with the mission to find his exiled uncle who is now allowed to return to civilization after serving his punishment. Unknown to us, however, Uncle Zed has gone completely off the deep end and has summoned an extremely powerful ancient dragon to destroy the world as his revenge. 

The book is full of companions which make the whole story more dynamic, from pet pseudodragon Hinoki, to young Saffron and her cat you get the feeling of a party trying to find uncle Zed through swamps and mountains before he destroys the world. In the end you get a truly inspired showdown in a volcano which is reminiscent of the ending of Revenge of the Sith, only written 22 years earlier! A rollicking fun adventure and my favourite of the Endless Quest books up until now!